Lisa Everydayphotos asks:
Hey! I’m about to make a big decision and upgrade from my shitty flip phone to a smart phone. My question is this:
Do I get an iphone or is at&t service in the Mission as bad as everyone says? I’m hoping to harness the wisdom of highly opinionated Missionites and hear whether at&t is really as absolutely awful as they say. Worth just staying with my current plan and just getting the Droid I keep hearing about.
Any chance I can spark some heated debate here?
First of all, don’t knock the flip phones. Ever hear of a little blog called honeyjets? Those photos are all RAZR, baby. Secondly, this will get ugly. The last time Kat mentioned buying an iPhone in passing, it got a shitstorm response that totally overshadowed her actual post.
Full disclosure: I am an obsessive iPhone user. I just got 3 stars on every level in the first world of Angry Birds. That takes at least 250 hours of use. But, I also happen work in a job that lets me test every major smartphone that hits the market, so I definitely have somewhat informed opinions on this matter… none of which I will use here.
I think the iPhone is way more fun to use, and it’s operating system is just more smooth and polished. I don’t make too many voice calls, so I can’t honestly speak accurately to how reliable AT&T is in the Mission. I have never had any major problems, but 80% of my calls last five months in the Mission were, “Where are you sitting? Oh I see you.” I’ve noticed a few problems in other neighborhoods, the Haight mostly. Battery life stinks. It doesn’t bail on me mid-day, but I have to charge it every night. The apps, maps, and web browser are the best. The camera and video on the iPhone 4, to my eyes, are about as good as it gets.
Android phones can do pretty much everything you care about, but it’s a bit more clunky. If you’re not coming from an iPhone you probably wont notice at all. There’s not as many quality apps available. All of this is going nowhere but up and they will catch up in all those categories soon. One other problem is that updates to Android OS are carrier-specific, so if your phone doesn’t sell well from their perspective, it wont be kept up to date with all the cool new stuff from Google. That can be a bummer. Perks are you don’t need iTunes to use it, tight Gmail/Gcal/Geverything integration, way better customization, and of course, carrier options (VERIZON).
If you care a lot about voice calls and being able to bang out text messages on a hardware keyboard, get the Droid 2 on Verizon. You will be happier. If you want the best multimedia/internet experience and will settle for mediocre voice performance (AT&T), it’s still hard to beat the iPhone 4.
Wow, I just re-read the question and realized I didn’t really answer it at all. Good luck.
Readers: what do you think? Here, I’ll save you some time. Check one:
[ ] NERD RAAGE! I DISAGREE WITH EVERYTHING
[ ] YOU’RE ALL YUPPIES, I USE A ROTARY
[Photo by TerryJohnston]
